Public Higher Education Advocates Conclude Cross-State March for Increased Funding with Boston Common Rally
BOSTON/Boston Common - Ten students, staff, faculty, and alumni from the Public Higher Education Network of Massachusetts concluded a 114-mile march across the state to defend public higher education with a Thursday rally on Boston Common attended by over 150 supporters. The marchers stopped at seven campuses to raise awareness and gather thousands of signatures on a statement in support of their "Great State of Mind Campaign" - which they delivered to legislators at the conclusion of the event.
The campaign statement calls for state government to increase state support for higher education to the national average and decrease costs to students to the national average. According to PHENOM organizers, "the Bay State is currently 46th of 50 states in per capita support, has cut funding more than any other state in the past five years, and has some of the highest student charges in the country."
Several speakers addressed the rally - which was held on a National Day to Defend Public Education - and covered different aspects of the challenges facing public higher education in Massachusetts.
Shauna Manning, president of the Classified Staff Union at UMass Boston, explained how budget cuts were affecting her members - and, like a number of other speakers, specifically mentioned Rep. Karyn Polito (R-Shrewsbury and Republican candidate for State Treasurer) as a roadblock to getting more funding for public higher education, "The members of my union are the ones that process your applications. We put in your grades. We put in the change of grades. We mow the lawns. We remove the snow during inclement weather. We catalog the books in the library. And all the other things that keep the university functioning. Without us, students wouldn't be able to go to class, and faculty wouldn't have classes to teach. Right now, one of the reasons the faculty and staff are here today is to fight for our contracts. We bargained - and we bargained in massive concessions - because of the economy and signed our contracts and ratified them in April of 2009. Our contracts then went to the Governor who signed them and to the legislature in June 2009. This year, in an unprecedented attempt, we were asked to renegotiate those signed contracts. We already took a year at 1 percent, and year at zero percent. Right now, we have not had a raise since July 2007.
"We still waiting for a one percent raise that should have started July 2010. Our contracts have been in the supplemental budget. Representative Polito has been blocking it in the House. When she was late for work - one day last week she was late for work - and they passed it. It's now in the Senate, where we have Republican senators who are now blocking it. When it gets through the Senate it will go back to the House where Polito has said she will block it again. These people are playing political football with our livlihoods. I can't tell you how many people are hurt by not getting this paltry one percent increase. During this time, our healthcare has risen about 25 percent. I have members in my union who can't go to the doctor because they can't afford the co-pay. They have healthcare in name only. We have single parents who reserve any healthcare dollars for their children. And they don't go to the doctor. I have a member who has children who is eligible and uses the WIC program. We also have people on Boston public housing. We have members of our union that work full-time and do not make a living wage. We have members who get food stamps and they're full-time employees of the Commonwealth."
Sen. Stan Rosenberg (D-Amherst) recounted the recent history of public higher education spending, and issued a call to action, "This country was built on a free public education. Massachusetts was the birthplace of that free public education. We had the first college in America here in Massachusetts. And we've built the public higher education system for those who have the capacity, but don't necessarily have the means to get the education that they can benefit by having. We are seeing a national trend that's being played out in Massachusetts far more agressively and far more destructively than anywhere else in the country. We have among the lowest state appropriations - year after year after year - and this has actually been going on for literally decades. And we have among the highest student charges in the country. And we are well above the national average. This comprimises people's access to higher education. And we don't want to take anything away from our private colleges.
"We don't want to take anything away from the students that go to private colleges. But the public higher education system in Massachusetts is dying. It's absolutely dying. We are well below 25 percent state funding. When my generation went to UMass, the Commonwealth paid 85 to 90 percent of the bill. When I started to work at the State House as a staff person, the Commonwealth paid two-thirds of the cost of UMass and about 75 percent of the cost of the state and community colleges. And now we're down to 25 percent or less. We have to reverse this trend.
"The only way I can think of to reverse this trend is for the people who care the most, who understand what's happening in this area of policy and budget and concern, organize, mobilize and refuse to accept anything other than the support and the budgets and policies that we need for Massachusetts public higher education to succeed. There are a million people in this Commonwealth of Massachusetts of 6.5 million people who on any given day have a vested interest in the health and welfare of the public higher ed system. There are the students. There are the faculty and staff. There are the parents of the students. There are the alums. There are the union members all across the state in all forms of unions whose sons and daughters may well have public higher education as the only viable option for them to have access for a higher education. And we have the businesses of the Commonwealth who rely upon the Massachusetts public higher education system to train, educate and provide the workforce that Massachusetts needs in order to maintain a strong economy. Those million people have to be organized."
Jill Stein (G-R), the only one of the four invited gubernatorial candidates to show up at the rally, followed up on Rosenberg's call to action by pointing out where more money could be found for public higher education, "Thank you for leading the way across the Commonwealth. Not just for higher education. But for education, for our economy, for our jobs which depend on you our trained workforce. And above all for our democracy, for our community. Which really needs to be standing up right now. I want to just briefly thank all the other speakers for all the good points they made. I don't want to repeat them. But I do want to add one thing. I want to challenge the conventional wisdom that's out there that we don't have enough money. Because remember, Wall Street had its biggest year ever for profits. That the CEO bonuses are at an all-time high. And that America's big corporations - including those in Massachusetts have more money in the bank than ever before.
"So the problem is much more than not having enough money in the budget, it's about the values and the priorities on Beacon Hill - as on Capitol Hill, but let's focus here on Beacon Hill. Because there's so much we can do. You may remember that while there's not enough to fund education, and higher ed has been cut about $600 million dollars over the past 10 years - bringing us down to near bottom, cutting us more than any other state in the past five years - while that's happened remember that we are allowing about a billion dollars to be added to our healthcare costs from this massive health insurance bureaucracy which we could be cutting and saving, if we moved to a single payer health care Medicare for All system.
"And we could cut the incredible health care bills that our students are having to take loans on in addition to the loans to pay for their education and come out in the situation in which we don't have jobs. In which we've been giving hundreds of millions of dollars - in fact, 1.7 billion every year in this bogus so-called economic development tax cuts for large corporations. Many of whom take the money and run. And I won't bother to name names right now but know that they are there. And if we had the will on Beacon Hill, then we could indeed recoup that money which we are bleeding out now by a thousand cuts and instead put that money where it needs to go. To bringing down the cost of tuition and fees, to fully funding and paying the contracts, to funding financial aid, and to forgiving the unconscionable and criminal loans that our students are carrying and going out into the world. We need jobs for you, and that's what we should be focusing on: your jobs, funding your education. We can do it together. I urge you to stand up and continue to lead us all the way into the voting booth on November 2nd."
Alex Kulenovic, organizing director of PHENOM and one of the marchers, spoke last, "I just want to say one more thing. I was also a marcher. I marched with the group from Pittsfield, all the way through 9 campuses. We followed Route 9 for a long time. We walked 21, 22 miles some days. Enormous wear and tear. I've developed a limp that I hope goes away in a few days. At one point a wasp bit me in the neck randomly. You know ultimately what this really was was just an interesting adventure for us. It is nowhere near the difficulty that students go through on a daily basis. Nowhere near it.
"And you know, in this country, I think as early as the 1950s, we decided that education at the K to 12 level was a right. That it should be for everyone. That it should be free. We have not yet gotten to the point where we believe that higher education is the same way. And yet, the way our workforce is now, the way our economy is now, you simply cannot succeed without higher education. It is no longer simply a pathway to success, as our own current President has said, it is a prerequisite. And yet, where are we, right now? We're seeing continual cuts. We're seeing campuses that are being squeezed to the limit. We are seeing layoffs on our campuses. We are seeing contracts that are not funded. We are seeing student fees double and then double again. And this needs to stop.
"So why are we here? We are here to reverse that trend. We've talked about the Great State of Mind campaign. How we're trying to get to the average in all of these measures. Sounds reasonable and modest, right? But to actually get there, we would have to double the amount of state funding going into the system right now. And today is when we're going to start that. We're going to double state funding within the next two years. And we're going to keep going until everyone agrees that higher education and public higher education are not a privilege for the few, for the elite, that they're not a commodity for the few that can afford it, but that higher education is a right for everyone.
"Now and in the future it is the one thing that actually allows people to better themselves to live a better life than their parents - to actually reverse the trends which have turned us into a more unequal society than ever before. In income, in wealth, and now in opportunity. And if we're every going to do anything about income and wealth, we first have to narrow the opportunity gap and there is absolutely nothing we can do to change that except to make higher education a right, to fight for it, to go to the legislature, to make sure that this is the one issue that everyone talks about ahead of November 2nd, that its the one thing every voter thinks about when they go into the voting booth.
"And one more thing, you may have noticed that its October 7th and that classes on our campuses have barely started, and yet here we are, fighting in full force - loud, ready to send a message to our legislature. We have seven more months, seven good organizing months this year. To do even more. We can crush Question 3. We can make sure that we support the candidates who are going to get things done for us. And beyond that we can make sure that we begin to build a movement for public higher education. That we take what has historically been one of the strongest forces - student power. That we harness it. And that we bring it to this golden dome and we change it forever. When they go into the voting booth."
Kulenovic's attack on Question 3 - the statewide ballot question that would would reduce the state sales tax rate from 6.25 to 3 percent - was echoed by other speakers and was also criticized on a number of placards held by rally attendees.
Carla Howell - chair of the Question 3 sponsoring organization, the Alliance to Roll Back Taxes - responded to a request for comment on the matter from Open Media Boston, "One of the hardest-hit sectors of the economy in this recession is graduating seniors and young workers who face daunting school loans. Way too many can't find jobs, or are taking jobs for which no college training is required, while facing bills they can't pay. Priority #1 is to create jobs for them. The only way to reduce unemployment via government policy is to tax less and spend less. Rolling back the sales tax to 3% will create 33,000 sustainable, private-sector jobs.
"YES on 3 to roll back the sales tax to 3% is vital to create good jobs and to make it possible for students and workers to pay back loans so that young workers have a shot at the job opportunities they want and need to be self-sustaining and fulfilled in their careers."
Directly following the end of the rally, participants entered to the State House to deliver "Great State of Mind" signatures to legislators and meet with them about increasing funding to the Mass. public higher education system.
Rep. Polito did not respond to a request for comment.